Disclaimer: The views of this writer do not necessarily represent those of E2News
The recent essence drop has been dubbed as a huge reward designed to thank long term holders of virtual property. But was it implemented fairly? I personally think not. The amount of essence produced per tile was based on the new tile price. This means that if users spent their money smartly and bought highly valued countries, they benefited more than users that were holding less valuable tiles. I have no objection to that, but where concerns get raised is when we consider the case of locked country tiles.
There are thousands of users who purchased tiles without knowing, that shortly after their purchases, their chosen country would be locked. These users were not able to see their tiles increase in value like other countries, have not been able collect land income tax like others, were not able to utilize the marketplace in the same way as other users, and now received a significantly decreased amount of essence with this last drop. Since their countries are locked, they will likely never know what the new tile price would have been in their country so they won’t ever know just how much essence (which CEO Shane Isaac claims will be valuable) they missed out on.
These unfortunate users were never given reasons as to why their countries have been locked and never been given any sort of dates or time frames when they can expect their countries will be open. Looking ahead at upcoming announcements, there is slated to be one in relation to mega-cites. Is the long-held trend going to continue with locked country users once again being thrown to the wayside - or will Earth2 begin to acknowledge the redheaded stepchildren of the Earth2 user-base and make considerations for locked country users? For this there is hope!
Specifically, on the topic of essence drop, customer support has remained apathetic despite the fact that customer support confirmed the essence drop was based on the new tile price. Luckily customer support is not the end-all-be-all of Earth2: CEO Shane Isaac is. Shane Isaac is personally aware of the essence drop situation and has a team deliberating on this topic right now as I type.
Will Shane Isaac, the man that vows to “bring power to the players” be the hero that locked country users desperately need? You need not wait very long to find out, as Earth2’s decision on this is set to be detailed within the next few days. This is a very big opportunity for Earth2 to reinvigorate and reinstall confidence in the locked country user base.
Check back soon for updates on this story.
-HeyCore
For disclosure purposes, the majority of my tiles are in locked countries and it causes me great pain to imagine all of the essence that I missed out on in the recent essence drop.